RTE summary ofPlato's Warning Has Been Vindicated, essay, The Hedgehog Review,
This essay is by Michael Marinaccio, executive director of the Center for Responsible Technology. He starts with a reassurance common in parenting books: Socrates feared that writing would harm society, that fear proved wrong, so new technologies are nothing to worry about. Marinaccio returns to the original story, told by Plato in the Phaedrus, in which King Thamus warns that people who rely on writing will lose their memory and gain only the appearance of wisdom.
Marinaccio argues that this warning, premature for writing, is now being borne out by AI. Drawing on philosophers and media theorists, he contends that large language models imitate human language through statistical patterns without the understanding behind real speech, and that people who rely on them risk mistaking the appearance of knowledge for the real thing.
Why it matters
The idea that every new technology was once feared is often used to set concerns aside. Whichever side of that argument a reader lands on, the practical question for schools stays the same: what does a given tool actually do to students' memory, understanding, and independent thinking? That is a question evidence can help answer.
This is RTE's summary. For the complete story, read it where it was originally published.
Read full article on The Hedgehog Review (opens in a new tab)Opens on The Hedgehog Review.
RTE summaries describe published reporting and commentary. Views and claims belong to the people and publications cited.